Yo

It's not that the past couple of weeks haven't had things happen in them - dealing with ideas for jobs, and doing my first journal paper review which was a very interesting and slightly scary experience, and slyly indoctrinating my girl scouts into the ways of Oxfam Unwrapped (most satisfactory, as was seeing the probing questions they asked about things), and buying Christmas presents, and having various holiday season festivities, and learning about the madness that are cookie swaps, and being taught to make jap chae (omg so good), and of course proofreading Nick's thesis which led to the discovery that I can be a really picky proofreader if I put my mind to it - but I've also been spending rather too much time inside my head, and what's there isn't really fit for public consumption. I'm not sad or upset or anything like that - just been mulling over lots of things, not quite sure to what end.

Anyway - off home soon, which will be interesting in itself - so happy holidays and all that.

Winter has come

So, Nick has gone and winter has come. The two, I admit, are somewhat unrelated - but I thought it made for a nice literary/pathetic flourish :-) And actually, winter hasn't really come properly either, to be honest - we've been alternating days of proper cold and frost on the grass with days like today, which were around 15C and sunny and lovely, so...

Lack of posting has been mainly through lack of time and energy than lack of things to talk about. There's been lots of little things going on, keeping us busy both during the week and at weekends, and somehow blogging got pushed back.

Still on a weather-related note for a moment, I seem to have missed the wonderful autumnal foliage colours that I got to see last year. Not sure if it's because the rain got in the way, or the being in LA, or just being generally distracted and driving rather than walking/cycling around - but it's a little sad. Hopefully there will be some to make up for it next autumn!

But we have been getting outside, honest! For example, one morning we went for a nice walk in the woods behind the Princeton Battlefield. It was very pretty - cf. photo:



and involved an optional crossing of a very shaky rope bridge (look familiar, Chris?) which I REALLY did NOT enjoy doing but sort of felt I had to, to prove a point or overcome my fears or some such motivational crap. Might opt to remain unmotivated and unproven next time though.



And, just to show you how in touch with nature we are, we also spent a few minutes observing and photographing a rather hair caterpillar-type creature, appropriately decked out in Princeton colours:



Our being-in-touch-with-nature-ness actually goes even further - have I ever waxed lyrical about my farm scheme thingy? No? Shame on me!! So, here, instead of (or as well as) having deliveries of veggie boxes, you can also buy a 'share' in the farm (sadly to be paid upfront, covering 6 months) and each week you go to the farm and pick up whatever has been collected that week, of which you get, unsurprisingly, a share; and there are also other crops that you can and pick yourself in the fields, also within measure; and it's all very nice and wholesome and local and ethical (probably) and organic and means that clutching obscure root vegetables while pondering their fate has remained a viable activity for me rather than being simply an Oxonian memory. ANYway. The point of this was, that in mid-November the scheme ends and before they close down the farm for the season, they have the 'annual pig-out', whereby we members could go and roam the fields and collect any leftover produce for our own benefit.

This sounds very nice, and very fun, and the weather happened to be absolutely lovely that Sunday morning, so we naively set out to get a few veggie things for the winter ahead. Oh reader, we were naive indeed! We had no trowel, nor garden shears, nor towers of bags and containers as all the other infinitely more prepared people had. Nor did we have any knowlege of many vegetables, and roamed the fields wondering what was chard and what was weeds. We did manage a few successes, such as snapping broccoli heads off, and unearthing small celeriacs, and our personal favourite, digging out carrots with our bare hands. While watching our neighbour doing it with a trowel and being about 10 times faster than us. We concluded that farming is helluva hard work, and it's no surprise that people get the urge to give it up. Yes, it feels very satisfying to stand up clutching a punnet of carrots that you yourself have extracted, but it also feels very painful on your back - and that was just after a few minutes, done for fun, not for a living....

What else...mainly we just lived like a normal couple, which was the whole point of it really. Occasionally went out with friends, or went to see them for dinner/coffee (yes! I have that kind of friends now! Amazing what a difference a year makes). Cooked lots - we tackled my collection of random snipped-out recipes and gave them a go, which was fun, if not always successful. You should have by now seen (on FB) the glorious picture of the glorious roast chicken, among other things...And of course, we had our first American Thanksgiving (I'd gone to see Nick in Europe last year) with my family in NYC, which was nice in both a culinary and a sociable sense.

And in the last few days, we've just been dealing with a seemingly endless stream of conference deadlines, forms to fill in and send off, applications for jobs, conversations about The Future, and the like. Obviously I am incredibly sad to be here on my own again, but there is so much to do - more deadlines coming up, more work stuff, more applications to be made, more thinking to be thought - to say nothing of the Christmas shopping - that I hope to get through the next few weeks relatively unemotionally. As for the new year...can't make any promises I'm afraid!

It is perfectly possible to get around LA by bus

Last week (was it last week? Maybe two weeks ago. Anyway, recently) we had a little trip to Los Angeles. It was good - it was good to have a bit of a break (I worked out that apart from trips home and to the UK, I hadn't had 5 consecutive days of holiday in a good two years) and it was interesting. And I loved it that it was so hot - up to 30 degrees (celsius) at some points!

There are photos on flickr and FB, and here are some random impressions on it all.

First: it's a loong way away. Well, 6 hours, which somehow doesn't seem so bad when you're going to the UK - but it feels wrong to be on a plane for six hours, and still be in the same country when you land. This land is a big land.

We were staying in Westwood, which is where the UCLA campus is (because of Nick's conference) and I think it's a great area to stay in if you're not desperate to be near the beach, or in a very glitzy place or suchlike. Because of the students, there's loads of cheap places to eat, cafes, ladidah coffee shops (in one - a very small one - we counted 4/5 macs and a customised dell), and somewhat interesting shops.

Also, crucially, there are many many buses that go to most places you want to get to, at acceptable intervals and very low prices (75 cents or $1.25), thus proving wrong all those who say that you can't possibly survive without a car as a tourist, or that you will miss out on many things if you.

Exhibit A: we got the bus to the splendid Getty Center and were there in 15 minutes. We loved it. You take a little train-tram thingy up the hills, and you end up in this complex of museum rooms and terraces and gardens. The museum, which spans several centuries of art, is just the right size to be interesting and finish before you're bored or tired. The terraces give you 360 degree views of the Santa Monica bay, the surrounding hills, the 405 freeway, and downtown LA in the far distance. The gardens are really pretty. Heck, even the food was good, and how often can you say that of museum cafes? We spent a good 4/5 hours there. Oh, and it was all free. Hurrah for multimillionaires, I guess...

Exhibit B: I went to and from Hollywood very easily, with the trip taking just 35 minutes, and going past all the pretty villas on Sunset Blvd, the gated compound of Bel Air, and bits of Beverly Hills. Ok, so at times I felt a little out of place on the bus, I confess, but it's probably my fault for being a bit snobbish. I definitely never felt unsafe or too uncomfortable - though I was very obviously the only non-local. I have to say, I wasn't keen on Hollywood at all - I had been warned that it is a little tacky and touristy, but I think this is a bit of an understatement....it was a zoo. Overrun with tourists, and with people hawking wares photos special rides souvenirs tickets vouchers and godknowswhatelse. The famous sidewalk with all the stars? Well, that's where we all walk, so it's not exactly practical to take a closer look or search for a particular name. There are some very lovely vintage buildings though, such as this one -



And I guess at least I can say I've been.

Exhibit C: On Sunday we took a bus to Santa Monica, and, again, got there relatively quickly and easily. I loved loved loved it. I loved the pedestrian avenue, I loved the enormous beach, the tacky arcade, the ocean, the dolphins that randomly turned up to play for us, the sunset - everything. It was basically what you imagine when you think of LA, and I hadn't actually had had much of it until then - in fact, a distinctive characteristic of the city seems to be to connect items of interest and/or beauty (a museum, a farmers' market, Hollywood, whatever) with enormous patches of great squalor and - not quite ugliness, nor run-downness, but...unkemptness maybe. Not particularly nice to walk about, or look around, which is sad, because I like walking randomly around places I don't know.

When I wasn't busy critically appraising the public transportation and the urban layout of the city, I turned my attention to other worthwhile pursuits. I walked around the UCLA campus a bit, which was pretty in what I assume is the style de riguer at Californian universities, since I also saw it at Stanford - a sort of cross between Romanesque and Mexican estate, cf. photo (and admire the sky while you're at it! No photoshop involved). Also overrun with tanned leggy blond people wearing too short shorts and flip flops (of both genders). Actually now that I think of it, not just blond, but pleasingly a zillion times more diverse than, say, Princeton.



I also had the great joy of meeting up with a friend of mine from the MPhil who now lives out there, in Long Beach to be precise - he took me out there, via a fun detour down Rodeo Drive (so I can say that I've seen it!), and it was another part of the city I really liked - more in the way of awesome old buildings, nice looking cafes and bars, and a sort of marina/quay type place where we had dinner.



All in all, a successful trip - not necessarily on my top 10 places to rush back to perhaps, but fun, and pleasing, and timed just right.

Binge gigging

So, where were we...last week was a cornucopia of excitement and gigs, starting from the Saturday - Patti Smith was doing an 'event' at the Metropolitan Museum, to tie in with this exhibition. To be honest we weren't entirely clear what she would do when we got the tickets, but I had a very good memory of a concert of hers in Naples a few years ago and I was keen to see her again, whatever she did.

The exhibition was of portraits of Americans taken in the 50s, and the theme of her show was a celebration of this sort of retro Americanness, the Americanness of the time I guess. This manifested itself in the form of songs - hers and others' - and reading poetry, and bits of prose. Which would be really cool - except that she was all giggly and nervous and I don't know what, and kept relying on her daughter who was there playing the piano and who had apparently helped arrange the whole thing, and it was sort of endearing, but also a bit annoying and surprising, to be honest. Maybe she just wasn't used to this setup? Because when she sang, she was awesome. It was the voice and the energy and the awesomeness you expect. It was a really interesting switch. And then at the end she read out Ginsberg (of course) and it was really very amazing, and you really realised what the Beat poets were aiming for, writing poetry that read like jazz music, totally mesemerizing. My favourite moment, I think.

Then, a couple of days later, Alan Bennett was giving a talk here at the university. Again, it wasn't clear what he'd be doing, but I was massively excited nonetheless as I loved Untold Stories and his diaries and last year I heard a wonderful rendition of the Lady in the Van recited by Alan Bennett himself and Maggie Smith which made me love him even more (especially since it was during one of my miserable flu bouts). Anyway. So off we went, and the best thing was that he started off with a comment on how he last year he had needed quite serious surgery and it was all done on the NHS and it had been great and hurrah for socialised medicine - which got him a huge applause and pleased us greatly. He talked a little bit about his youth, and then started reading from Untold Stories, occasionally giving some context or commentary to what he was reading - and it was nice to hear him read, but having read the book not too long ago, it wasn't quite as thrilling as one might have hoped. He took a couple of (mostly inane) questions at the end, and that was it. It made me a little sad actually, to see him, as he is a bit old, and a bit frail - not decrepit or anything like that, but clearly older rather than younger, and you just wanted to go and hug him...

At both events, we were struck by the behaviour of the audience. They seemed almost fulsomely overappreciative, exaggerated in their applause, their sometimes grating laughter which frankly sounds rather fake especially when what was said was not very funny to begin with, their naughty giggling when someone said the word fuck or mentions sex as if they were 6 instead of 60 - it drove us insane at times. Am I being too harsh? But really, there were times when I just wanted to turn around and slap someone. Or maybe I should become less cynical and rejoice that my fellow humans are relishing the moment. Maybe.

But wait! There is more. One morning during my usual manic cycling through the four radio stations I have memorized, trying to find one that played music rather than moronic adverts for products we will never need ('We wrap children too!' - this being a mudwrap service to make you look temporarily thinner - but I digress), one morning, as I was saying, I happened to hear that AC/DC were playing in Philly the following week. I foolishly mentioned this to Nick, thinking that it might be too hard or expensive to find tickets - but I was proved wrong on both counts, and last Wednesday I found myself headed down 95 to commune with rockers of all ages, feeling quite out of place without a band t-shirt or red light-up devil horns to my name....

So there I was, at an AC/DC concert, of which I know maybe three songs, and do not feel any particular attachment to - but I was willing to see if they put on a good show, which I fully expected them to. And it was a good show! We also happened to have very amazing seats (oh yeah - bizarrely, this was a seated thing, of course everyone was standing, but we had assigned seats which made it a lot less chaotic, and harder to dance around, and meant there was no moshing which was a bit sad - all in all a bit odd, but less danger of bruising or squashing I guess) which were maybe a few dozen yards from the stage, so we didn't really need to rely much on the big blow up screens. It was a proper show, with flames and giant props and lights and all. They are definitely out to entertain and get us to have fun, and that's great. They are also a little aged though, and seemed to need frequent breaks to breathe and drink water and get their stuff together...still, Angus is definitely a great guitar player, and did amazing solos, and I salute that ;-) If I can get to 55 or 62 and caper about like that....So, all in all, it wasn't the most stimulating gig from a quality-of-music point of view, but it was a lot of fun.

And with that, I take my leave.

Dr Displaced, or How I learned to stop whingeing and love the postdoc

A year! Today is not only the birthday of two very good friends, and of one of my godmother's adorable sons, but we also mark one year since I came here. I remember all too well the gut wrenching moment when I grabbed Sandra's arm at Heathrow and just started bawling desperately, and then how I had to quickly compose myself again to deal with the fact that my hand luggage was too fat and I had to leave more stuff behind and stop crying so I could focus. And then what with one thing and another I didn't actually have that much time before boarding, which was good, as it gave me less of a chance to mope.

You know that my first few months here were, well, pretty grim. And not just because of the constant getting ill. There is no way I would have got through it without you all - you know who you are - the Skyping, the letting me cry abundantly, the always being there, the care packages, the everything. And also the little things, the friendly comments on FB and on this blog, the random encouragement - it all helped. I missed everything and everyone so much, it was physically painful, and it got worse once Nick was back in England. So, thank you for pulling (or should that be pushing?) me through it.

Of course, everything started coming together eventually. Nice people at work became friends rather than just colleagues - and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful. My flat felt more and more like home. I finally got round to driving and improved my life 300% overnight. It stopped being snowy and 10 below zero all the time. Basically, I snapped out of it, I guess, and can now view the prospect of my second year here with great equanimity, indeed even pleasure, as things will be reassuringly familiar the second time round...

So, what have we learned this year, boys and girls?

Skype is one of the greatest inventions of the century. Fact.

I am capable of driving, even on motorways, and sometimes I even enjoy it.

I also possess a very embryonic sense of spatial awareness, though now that I own one I will never abandon my GPS.

Nope, still don't miss teaching.

I'd rather pay more taxes and not have to worry about the cost an ambulance, needing prescription medicines, or being ambushed by a massive pothole.

New Jersey ain't so bad. Cf. the farms, the shore, the endless amusement derived from the local riche.

But NYC is something else.

I can bake, some of the time.

I can also shovel snow.

There is so much stuff available to watch on the web, I barely register the lack of a TV. (ok, so the UK doesn't have Hulu, but then we don't have the iPlayer, so we're equal)

The subject of the multiculturality of this country, and the integration or otherwise of so many different nationalities and ethnicities, deserves a post of its own really. I'll just note here that one of the things I like best, and I think exemplifies this best, is the way that noone blinks twice when faced with an unusual, foreign, oddly spelled surname, but just takes their best guess at it - very refreshing.

It's very civilised to have all customer service numbers be 1800, and not be kept waiting for a zillion minutes, and have problems solved when you do speak to them.

It's less civilised to have it be barely possible to buy groceries without needing a car and/or a loan from the bank.

It's even less civilised to be charged to receive calls on your mobile.

NYC is one of the greatest cities ever (hm, have I mentioned this before?).

I think I passed the test.
When I applied for this job, I kept saying that one of the reasons I wanted to come here was to see if I could do it - if I could come out here, on my own, and go through with it. I admit that for the first few months I gave the impression of being anything but 'with it', and I probably was a little melodramatic.

But tonight, let me gloat: I'm here, and I'm happy.

Rushed update

Things that have been keeping me busy: revising a report on my past year's work which somehow grew to 17k words; cooking random new recipes, not all of them with massively successful outcomes; seeing my girls dissect owl pellets and get very excited about it; wandering around Prospect Park in Brooklyn and enjoying it immensely; watching lots of Mad Men; admiring the changing colours of the leaves, which look especially good against the very crisp, clear blue skies, especially when I go to work in the morning; cursing the stinginess of the city council that gives us potholes on the streets and dodgy slates on the pavements; feeling ashamed about how cheap petrol is; appreciating the benefits of having a great public library.

What a very active post! The time for reflection is nigh, fear not...

If you cut me, I bleed green

But not because I've suddenly become Irish, or an alien: the green in question refers to Girl Scout green, since the past week or so seems to have been rather consumed by various GS-related events and activities. Or rather, various GS-related events and activities seem to have consumed me in the past week.

It started innocently enough, with the first troop meeting of the year. We now have 10 girls instead of 5, and I think paradoxically it's a great improvement; the girls are less wild, because it's harder to egg everyone on when the group is larger, so I'm happy. Also we have two moms helping out with meetings, and one of them in particular has a very calm, soothing voice, slightly mesmerizing actually, so I look forward to working with her more.

Then we had the leaders' meeting (and remember this comes after a week where I'd already spent a total of almost 9 hours in various GS-related training sessions), which somehow took three hours, what with organising the coming year, and putting the finishing touches on the camping schedule. Then later in the week more last-minute scrambling to get essential camping supplies such as balloons and rope and make name badges.

Thankfully one evening was spared by the madness and we escaped to Philly for a Regina Spektor gig. It was really nice - although she doesn't go in much for audience interaction (apart from having to apologise the two times she forgot her lyrics), or indeed showiness (she was wearing a sort of black shirt-dress, nice but very low-key) - the woman can sing! (and play the piano) It was really very beautiful and fun and good, even if the venue was overridden with girls that looked about 16 and were all dressed up and screamed at an incredible pitch for every little thing. I suppose it's good that there is some youth who go in for sensible demure singer-songwriters who write fun and clever lyrics rather than Britneys and Miley Cyruses (did you know that she sings too? They keep playing her song on the radio, it's terrible), but it was a little overwhelming.

And then, finally, the big event that all this had been leading to: the camping weekend! This took place at a campsite about half an hour from here, and about 12 troops of all ages were there, some just for the day activities, other staying overnight for one or two nights. Apart from a couple of days at a festival a few years ago, I hadn't been camping since I was 15 or so, so I was looking forward to and dreading it in equal measures. Maybe a bit more of the latter actually, once I spotted the 'How to stay safe in bear country' page in our camping booklet.

The campsite was beautiful. It's Scouts only and is run by a very fun, energetic couple who are really into it. I got there before K. and the rest of my troop and had some very peaceful moments just being away from everything, in the quiet-that-isn't-really-quiet of foresty places, and felt nicely set up for the weekend. Over the course of which, we did lots of fun things: a bumpy nighttime ride on the back of a haywagon (a great way to see a forest at night without getting too freaked out), archery (yes, I suck), marshmallow roasting :-), the girls did boating and lots of running around, singalongs, etc.

There were also some difficult moments of course, ranging from trying to get 7, 9, and 10 year olds to get along, to getting anyone to listen to us, having to frantically contact parents of girls who have changed their mind at the last minute about staying overnight, and, of course, waking up in the night to the sound of rain and the slow dripping of cold water on your face and/or sleeping bag. The rain really annoyed us actually, it started raining the evening of Saturday, which meant a rush in the semi-darkness to store everything properly, and went on through the night (hence the damp awakening) and all Sunday morning as we were trying to pack up and clear everything away - not ideal, and it meant we were deprived of our lovely campfire on one of the evenings.

But! On Sunday morning we had a special guest, one Anna Goodale of the US Olympic rowing team, who won gold in Beijing as well as a slew of other world championships. The idea was that she would come and give a talk to the girls and be inspiring, but she went well over that. She turned up before 8am (she lives in Princeton as US Rowing is based here), hung around where the girls were making breakfast, helped out, chatted to them, asked them lots of questions - she was so charming and so nice and so good with them! I was in awe. Her talk was great too - pitched just at the right level and with such a good narrative arc, the woman didn't start rowing until she went to college and a couple of years later she was on the national team!! It's refreshing to hear of Olympic champions who have achieved greatness without having necessarily had to sacrifice their whole childhood to it. Not that she doesn't have to work hard now - training twice a day, 6/7 days a week...Anyway, her talk was great, she also had a video of the Olympics race where they won gold, which she played for us and sort of commented along which was cool - and she brought her gold medal along, which was big and heavy, and let all the girls touch it, and signed autographs for them, and was generally really down to earth and friendly - we were all completely bowled over.

On a more reflective note, I am constantly impressed by the skills and maturity some of these girls display - and not just my own, but many of the ones throughout the troops. They organise activities for the younger ones, get them excited about owl pellets, teach them about outdoor cooking in a really engaging manner - it's fun to be around them, and sometimes you get distracted by how grown up they seem and start to think you can treat them like mini-adults...until their next attack of petulance. Oh well - better than nothing...

Also, I enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time with the other leaders. In fact, I have to say that getting to know these women better, and learning from them, is for me one of the biggest perks of my volunteering. I think it's hard for people my age to come across really inspiring role models who are not their mothers - what we need is people who are a few steps ahead of us, but not too far away generationally - say 10/15 years older maybe - to give us a sense of what the next few years of our life might be like, and what challenges and balancing acts we are likely to encounter. Anyway, it's hard to find these people sometimes. I've been extremely lucky in the past couple of years in having had one such person land in my lap with whom I share not just a field of research but also a sense of...uhm, I don't know what word to use, (in)appropriateness? basically the point is that I can talk about anything without feeling awkward or embarassed or like I'm being judged! Although said person will always remain my biggest inspiration, I feel I have a lot to learn from these other women I am getting to know, too. They may not be my role models in every sense - I am rather disinclined to produce a seemingly endless supply of offspring, for instance - but they have so much energy, so much ability to multitask, to have lots of amazing projects on the run at the same time, and keep a family together, and make sure all their multiple children are having lots of great experiences, and in many cases have really cool jobs too - I definitely look up to them in that respect, and I feel ashamed that at my slightly younger, more unencumbered age, I often lack the willpower to even finish revising a measly article.

So ends the account of the past few days. I think I am still recovering from the camping in some ways, but I am pleased that I did it, and really it wasn't so bad: apparently all those years of Girl Scout camp have somehow left their mark, and I still have it in me...